Comment by steve_adams_86

Comment by steve_adams_86 14 hours ago

This isn't about convenience and accessibility so much as resiliency in emergencies.

You can run LoRa from a small power bank for days, or run it off of a small battery and solar panel indefinitely. Wifi is much more power hungry. Wifi also doesn't offer kilometres of range, making that power cost largely wasteful.

In an emergency, if you have limited power, WiFi will exclude 100% of the population simply because it's not practical to operate at all. LoRa, even if it enables 0.01% of the population (primarily experts in the technology) in that emergency, is a greater benefit to everyone at that time.

WiFi is a peace time technology based around a rich infrastructure that is not resilient in emergencies. If you skimmed the article you should check it out again. She details this stuff, and it's actually really interesting and worth understanding if you're into this stuff:

    LoRa radios have several advantages for use in emergency communications:
    
    no centralized infrastructure needed
    no license needed
    cheap (starting at ~€20)
    low-power (< 1W, can power with an ordinary mobile phone powerbank)
    runs open source Meshtastic firmware
    can send text messages across several line-of-sight hops (several kms)
    can connect via Bluetooth or WiFi to phones/computers
    many urban areas have a good Meshtastic network already

7373737373 14 hours ago

WiFi (with extra hardware, mostly antennas/routers, not too expensive anymore either) CAN offer (even tens of) kilometers of range, at least point to point: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lYJFwXw1ZIc

https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/category/wireless-ltu-5ghz/pro...

only 9W max power consumption too! well, that's not a few hundred milliwatts, still, better then ye olde lightbulb

PLUS gigabit throughput

if only our network stacks and protocols didn't assume hierarchical (local) networks by default, and kernels included p2p network stacks, then i'd feel more confident about blackouts being handled more gracefully

well, i suppose all this depends heavily on the nature of the emergency

generally i'm surprised that the sheer computational power of modern smartphones are not used more for this purpose, i haven't come across much true p2p software

on another note, there is still no (truly) cross-platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirDrop standard (especially one without artificial limitations), which is a shame

also i want to note that smartphones can even communicate directly with satellites now: https://youtube.com/watch?v=v30z-0bGbHQ

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steve_adams_86 13 hours ago

Yes, I use my phone over satellite regularly now. It's still amazing to me that it's possible. Phones are a great tool here because everyone truly does have them, they're portable, and they have large rechargeable batteries that can charge from countless sources over USB. So, it does seem like we could use them to great effect to create networks when other systems go down. I'm not sure they can handle long range comms due to requiring antennas, but close-range in cities might work well. I'm not sure what routing on that mesh would look like, or how busy it would get and how well phones could handle that.
Satellites could be an important component here, but there's always the need for redundancy. They can be compromised too, and you don't own them.
The LTU Extreme Range hardware is way, way more expensive than a LoRa radio, and it still uses quite a bit of power (relatively). It still seems far from ideal in situations where you can't depend on power utilities. Great point though, I wasn't aware that exists. It appears you need the one you linked as well as the Rocket as its base station, which puts it close to $800 CAD after taxes.

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